1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to curved liquid-crystal display devices and methods for forming/installing a reflective plate or reflective sheet used for a curved liquid-crystal display device.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, as liquid-crystal display devices have come to be used as display devices of television receivers, the screens of such liquid-crystal display devices have become increasingly bigger. But a problem with increasingly larger television LCD screens is that the viewing angle difference between the viewing angle when the viewer views the center portion of the screen, and the viewing angle when the viewer views the left and right edges of the screen increases (throughout this specification, the technical term “viewing angle” is defined as the angle between the line of sight of the viewer viewing the screen and the tangent to the intersection between the line of sight and the observed screen surface, and the difference between the center and left/right edge viewing angles is defined as and used to mean the “viewing angle difference”).
Furthermore, another problem with large-scale television LCD screens is that glare off the screens also increases. The problem of difference in viewing angle can be corrected by curving the screen into a concave shape.
However, when a backlight with the same structure as that of a flat liquid-crystal panel is used for a liquid-crystal panel whose screen is concavely curved (in the following also referred to as “concavely curved liquid-crystal panel”), then the uniformity of the light that is radiated from the light source within the backlight is lost due to the influence of spacers or the like that are installed between the concavely curved liquid-crystal panel and the backlight at the periphery of the concavely curved liquid-crystal panel. As a result, the uniformity of the screen brightness of concavely curved liquid-crystal panels is lower than the uniformity of the screen brightness of conventional flat liquid-crystal display devices.
A countermeasure to this problem is to make the horizontal width of the backlight wider than the horizontal width of the concavely curved liquid-crystal panel, as shown in FIG. 4. The problem and this countermeasure will be explained with reference to FIG. 4.
FIG. 4 is a diagrammatic cross-sectional view illustrating the relation between the line of sight of a viewer observing the two edges of a concavely curved liquid-crystal panel and the horizontal width of the backlight. In order to view images at the two edges of the concavely curved liquid-crystal panel, light rays passing through the line of sight 401 are necessary, and in order to obtain such light rays from a backlight 113, the horizontal width of the backlight 402 is widened to w4. That is to say, the horizontal width of the backlight 402 must be wider than the horizontal width w3 of a liquid-crystal display device whose liquid-crystal panel is flat. This countermeasure is undesirable, since it increases the outer form of the liquid-crystal display device.
Moreover, spacers or the like that support the concavely curved liquid-crystal panel at its rim are necessary, but these spacers are positioned at locations where they can be easily discerned by the viewer, so that when the viewer observes the concavely curved liquid-crystal panel in its usual state from the front, then these spacers may become visible and that portion will appear darker or colored due to the influence of the material or color of the spacers.
Document 1: JP H09-197135A